N. Korea Drops Propaganda Leaflets Over Border

North Korea has dropped thousands of propaganda leaflets attacking South Korea across their heavily militarised border for the second time this year, the South's defence ministry said Tuesday.

South Korean soldiers have collected about 17,000 leaflets, which were floated by balloon over the frontier on Saturday, a ministry spokesman said.

"They were found scattered in western border areas," the spokesman told AFP.

The leaflets criticise the defence ministry's "anti-Pyongyang" education programme for its military and praise pro-North Korean activists in the South, he said.

In 2004 the two sides agreed to halt all official-level cross-border propaganda following a landmark 2000 summit.

The South's defence ministry resumed the practise in late 2010 after the North shelled a border island in an attack that killed four South Koreans.

The ministry's propaganda balloon launches were suspended a year later, but the North resumed its own leafleting campaign in July this year.

Tensions on the divided Korean peninsula have remained high since a failed rocket launch by North Korea in April, which was seen by the United States and its allies as an attempted ballistic missile test.